Effects of Shadowing and Dictation on...
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Effects of Shadowing and Dictation on Listening
Comprehension Ability of EFL Leamers
Tomokazu NAKAYAMA Josai University
Akira rwATA Hokkaido Otaru Choryo Senior High School
Abstract
This article calls for a rethinking of the effectiveness of shadowing
and dictation as means of developing listening comprehension ability in Japanese high school EFL classrooms. The participants
were assigned to two groups: (a) one performed shadowing and dictation after completing listening drills and (b) the other engaged
in grammar drills after the same listening drills. Both groups
completed a 10-minute listening comprehension activity during regular classes. After 10 months, a posttest was conducted to check
the improvement in the listening comprehension ability. The results
revealed that group (a) outperformed group (b). The findings suggest that in the context of Japanese high school EFL classrooms,
the listening comprehension instruction that combines shadowing and dictation can improve students' Iistening comprehension ability.
1. Introduction and Literature Review
1.1 Background In recent times, it is an indisputable fact that listening comprehension
ability is regarded as one of the most important skills in the English as a
Foreign Language (EFL) context. In the first place, it is reported that
among the four macro skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing,
high school students perceive listening to be the most difficult skill (Icho,
2003). Moreover, when we consider English tests, ranging from the widely
recognized standardized tests such as TOEFL, IELTS, and TOEIC to local
ones that include entrance examinations for schools, it would be difficult
to find an English test that does not require listening comprehension. More
specifically, among various English tests, the one that has the greatest
impact on Japanese high school students is the University Entrance Center
Examination, which has adopted a listening comprehension section since
2006.
Considering this situation, it cannot be denied that there is a strong
need for fostering solid listening comprehension ability in Japanese high
school classrooms. However, how can EFL teachers help students improve
this ability? Not many teachers as practitioners may have a concrete plan.
Therefore, there is a need for teaching methods that are easy to adopt and
apply in the context of different classrooms, but that are still practically
effective and sustainable.
Shadowing and dictation, which have been gaining more attention in classrooms of late, are considered to be possible options. If we attempt to
assess the effectiveness of a type of listening comprehension instruction
that involves the simultaneous use of shadowing and dictation, the results
obtained from those who currently employ this type of instruction may
either be positive or negative. In any case, the results should have an
impact on the listening comprehension practice in high schools.
1.2 Review of Previous Studies
Listening comprehension ability is becoming a more important factor
for success not only in daily communication but also in academic settings,
even in EFL countries such as Japan. Needless to say, it can be regarded
as a crucial ability, especially for international students studying in
English-speaking countries. As mentioned previously, Japanese high school students learning English are not the only ones who are struggling.
International students who are nonnative speakers of English and are enrolled in different disciplines at American universities also seem to have
difficulties with regard to listening comprehension. Powers (1985) surveyed 30 institutions in the U.S. When asked to indicate the relative
importance of the four macro skills for international students to achieve
success in their academic departments across disciplines, the professors
rated listening comprehension ability as the second most important (p. 6).
Hence, as Morley (1991, p. 82) argues, "The importance of listening cannot be underestimated; it is imperative that it not be treated trivially in
second and foreign language curricula."
Until the 1980s, Iistening comprehension was taken for granted in the
field of language pedagogy and activities related to this ability in foreign
or second language classrooms merely involved testing and not teaching
(Dunkel, 1991; Field, 1998; Meskill, 1996). In particular, dictation is
mainly used as a testing device rather than a teaching device (Jafarpur &
Effects of Shadowlng and olctatlon on ustenlng comprehenslon Ablnty of EFL Learners 9
Yamini, 1993). Recently, however, many different listening comprehension
activities have been suggested for EFL classrooms; the primary aim of these activities is teaching rather than testing (e.g., Ur, 1984). Shadowing
and dictation are included among these activities. According to Ur (1984,
p. 128), both of these practices involve repetition and mimicry, which are
considered to be valuable as comprehension exercises because in order to
reproduce a sentence, one has to listen carefully not only to grasp the
sounds but also the meaning. In particular, dictation contains the target
language in both aural and written form, and the written form of the text
can serve as visuals to diminish the decoding load of learners. Therefore, it
enables them to reach a deeper level of processing than mere aurally
repeated text (Meskill, 1996; Oller, 1979). These might be some of the
reasons why these activities are encouraged in EFL classrooms.
In Japanese EFL classrooms, shadowing and dictation as means of teaching listening comprehension are now widely used, and their practical
effects have been examined (e.g., Sugiura, Takeuchi, & Baba, 2002; Tamai,
2005).
Shadowing usually refers to the activity wherein students listen to the
aural input and try to repeat it orally as soon as they have heard it.
Generally, it is often broken down into two types namely, prosody shadowing and contents shadowing. The primary difference between these
two types of shadowing concerns the amount of attention that is paid to the
prosody and contents of the text. The former focuses more on prosody, and
the latter on meaning. In the field of language teaching, shadowing is
assumed to be effective for learning the prosodic features of the target
language and for improving the listening and speaking abilities (Okada,
2002; Takizawa, 1998).
Dictation, an activity that most EFL teachers are familiar with, should
be orthographic text dictation, wherein students transcribe a unified passage. It is considered to reinforce the spelling/sound correlations of
English and reveal comprehension and grammatical weaknesses (Sawyer &
Silver, 1972). Field (1998) suggests that dictation as post-1istening exercises can be effective for solving the problems of syntactic parsing.
He also argues for the importance of teaching sub-skills through dictation
as a means of micr0-1istening practice in classrooms. Sugiura, Takeuchi,
and Baba (2002) point out the advantage of dictation in classrooms as this
activity is relatively easy to conduct and easy for learners to check themselves.
In Japan, recently, an increasing amount of classroom research has been
conducted on the effects of shadowing and dictation in English teaching
pedagogy. There are many studies that report the positive impact of these
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activities on students' motivation or attitude toward learning English
(Eguchi, 2007; Iwabuchi, 2002; Kadoyama, 2008; Orita, 2000; Ozasa, 1989; Sato & Nakamura, 1998; Shimo, 2005; Wiltshier, 2007). Iwabuchi (2002) used dictation for university freshmen in his class; the class met
once a week and performed the activity for 20 minutes each time. In his
study, 42 out of the 46 students responded positively regarding the effectiveness of dictation, and the experimental group showed significant
improvement in terms of its motivation toward English listening. Shimo
(2005) conducted research on the effects of a collaborative shadowing
activity in her university English class and found that students with a
lower proficiency level from the basic classes enjoyed the activity significantly 'more and found it to be more beneficial than students with a
higher proficiency level. Orita (2000) reported that 80 percent of his
students responded that shadowing and dictation exercises were either useful or very useful for improving their listening comprehension ability.
In spite of reports that showed positive effects on the motivation of the
students and on the behavior toward English listening, until now there has
been no consensus about whether shadowing and dictation can improve the
overall listening comprehension ability of EFL Iearners. While some researchers have demonstrated positive results (Onaha, 2004; Sato &
Nakamura, 1998, 1999; Sugiura, Takeuchi, & Baba, 2002; Tokunaga & Eguchi, 2007), others have been unable to do so (Iwabuchi, 2002; Jafarpur
& Yamini, 1993; Kadoyama, 2008; Komuro, 2005; Taura, 2000).
In particular, Sugiura, Takeuchi, and Baba (2002) researched the effectiveness of dictation for 147 Japanese EFL university students in
Japan. The study employed dictation activities in class using a dictation
sheet, a printed transcript with 100 blanks. The students were also asked to
dictate an approximately 3-minute text at home and submit the sheet after
marking it themselves. There was no time limit, so that the students could
listen to the text as many times as they wanted. After the activities had
been implemented for 4 months (13 classes), there was a considerable improvement in the listening abilities of students. Onaha (2004) argues
that shadowing and dictation expand phonological memory and improve the ability to pay attention to English prosody. As a result, both activities
improved the listening comprehension ability of the university students.
Kadoyama (2008), on the other hand, used movies for dictation activities.
The university students were shown the Japanese subtitles before they dictated them in English. After performing this activity for 12 weeks, it
was found that the dictation activity had no effect on the improvement of
their listening comprehension ability. Some researchers also suggest that
the effectiveness of shadowing training on the improvement of listening
Effects at Shadowing and Dictation on Listening comprehension Ability of EFL Learners 11
comprehension ability is limited to students with a relatively lower proficiency level (Sato & Nakamura, 1999; Yanagihara, 1995).
One point that should be noted here is that in the studies discussed
above, the activities such as shadowing and dictation were largely utilized
as homework. This suggests that it might sometimes be difficult to know
the exact amount of time that students spent on these activities. Another
point to be noted is that in most of the cases, the class activities used both
shadowing and dictation, although the degree of allocated time and effort
differed. Although they are very few in number, some studies have focused
exclusively on investigating the effect of either shadowing or dictation.
For example, Iwashita (2008) tried to eliminate visual information as much
as possible in her study on the effectiveness of shadowing. However, when
we consider a real-1ife classroom setting, this carefully controlled
environment might be rather complex and sometimes unnatural. This is because many teachers now believe that both activities are effective for
improving students' Iistening comprehension ability. As a result, both the
activities are often adopted simultaneously. Hence, in this study, it should
be worth investigating the combined effects of shadowing and dictation in
the Japanese high school setting, where there exist such limitations as
relatively huge class size, availability of a relatively short time for
listening activity, and feasibility and sustainability of conducting the
activities during class time and not as homework.
1.3 Aims of this study
This study aims to determine whether the instruction using shadowing
and dictation simultaneously after the listening practice drills can improve
learners' Iistening comprehension ability more than that using grammar
drills after the same listening practice drills in Japanese high school EFL
classrooms.
2. Method
2.1 Participants
The participants of this study were 151 high school students in the tenth
grade (male: 78 and female: 73). A11 the participants were native speakers
of Japanese. They were assigned to one of two groups, which consisted of
two homerooms: Grammar group (male: 39 and female: 37) and Dictation group (male: 39 and female: 36).
Each group had one teacher: the author taught the Dictation group and
another teacher instructed the Grammar group.
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2.2 Materials
Textbooks. As materials, three listening training books (Kiriharashoten
Henshubu, 2006a, 2006b; Matsuzaka, 2006) were used for both the groups.
However, only for the Dictation group, dictation sheets, which were transcripts with blanks accompanied by Japanese translations on the back
of the sheets, were produced. Similarly, grammar drill (Wada, 2007) was
used only for the Grammar group.
Global Test of English Communication (GTEC) for Students. GTEC for
Students, a standardized test developed by the Benesse Corporation, consists of reading, writing, and listening sections. In this research, only
the results of the listening section of GTEC for Students Basic (1lth),
which has a maximum score of 250 points, were used in order to ensure the
homogeneity of the English listening comprehension ability of both groups. The listening section of the test comprises four parts and each part
includes 10 items. The types of questions are similar to those of the
TOEIC test. Part A requires students to choose the statement that best
describes each picture; Part B involves selecting the best response to each
question; Part C requires students to look at the illustration, Iisten to the
context in Japanese, and then select the best answer to each question in a
short conversation. Finally, Part D involves listening to short talks and
then choosing the best answer to each question that is printed in the test
book. This test was conducted in May 2007 at the high school to which the
participants of this study belong. Further, another GTEC for Students Basic (13th), which served as the posttest, was conducted after the activity
in order to compare the improvement in the listening comprehension ability of each group.
Classes. The participants took two English subjects namely, English I
and Oral Communication I. English I consisted of four weekly classes, and
Oral Communication I, of two weekly classes. In total, they attended six
50-minute weekly English classes. Listening training using the materials
specified above was conducted only in English I classes, which means that
the participants regularly had training four times a week, except in the case
of special occasions (e.g., summer and winter vacations, mid-term and
final examinations in each semester, and other school events). Approximately 10 minutes were allocated for the training in each class.
The class procedures of English I were the same for both groups, other
than the approximately 10-minute listening training. Moreover, there was
no difference between the two groups with regard to the class procedures
of the other English subject (Oral Communication I), which was taught by
the teacher who did not teach English I. Hence, it can safely be said that
both the groups had equivalent English class experiences, except for the
Eftects of shadowing and Dictation on Listening comprehension Abuity of EFL Learners 13
approximately 10-minute listening training.
2.3 Procedure
The procedure differed for the two groups of students, which consisted
of two homerooms. The pretest (GTEC for Students Basic (1lth)) was conducted in May 2007 before the study began; it confirmed that there was
no significant difference between the two groups with regard to their listening comprehension ability, t (149) = -1.25, p = 0.21. Two different
instructors taught the two different groups. The class procedures were
almost the same and involved the same materials, except for the listening
training for which approximately 10 minutes of each class were allocated.
One instructor taught the Grammar group and the other taught the Dictation group.
The Grammar group answered the questions in the listening training
textbooks; they then immediately checked their answers. After that, they
completed the grammar drills for approximately 5 minutes, which focused
on the grammatical points they were learning at that time in English I. The
Dictation group used the same listening training textbooks, and then they
spent approximately 5 minutes dictating the script of the listening training
materials. They listened to the material twice and filled in the blanks on
the sheet, which had the printed script with many blanks. Following the
dictation, the participants tried shadowing the script twice. In the first
attempt, they were allowed to look at the script; hence, technically, parallel
reading was allowed. However, in the second attempt, they were asked to
avoid using the script for shadowing as much as possible. The instructor
suggested that they concentrate on either the prosody or the content of the
listening materials.
The procedure continued from June 2007 to March 2008 and the posttest (GTEC for Students Basic (13th)) was conducted in April 2008 in
order to find out if there was any significant difference in the improvement
of the listening comprehension ability between the two groups.
2.4 Scoring
Immediately after both the pre- and posttests were completed, they
were sent to the Benesse Corporation for scoring. It took almost a month
for the test to be scored and standardized on each occasion. Although a
total of 159 students actually enrolled in the four homerooms, 8 students
were eliminated from the data because they did not take either the pretest,
posttest, or both the tests.
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3. Results
This section presents the scores on the listening pre- and posttests and
the improvement from the pre- to the posttest. The statistics in Table l
show the mean scores, standard deviations of the pretest among the groups.
Table 2 also describes the mean scores and standard deviations among the
groups on the posttest.
In order to ascertain whether the instruction using shadowing and dictation simultaneously after the listening practice drills can improve the
learners' Iistening comprehension ability more than that using grammar
drills after the same listening practice drills in Japanese high school EFL
classrooms, the increases in the mean scores from the pretest to the posttest were compared. A t-test was conducted on the increases in the
mean scores of the groups. It yielded a significant difference between the
two groups, as shown in Table 3, t (149) = -2.78, p < 0.01.
Table 1: Means and Standard Deviations of scores on the Pretest by Group
Test (Pretest) Group GTEC Basic (1 Ith) Dictation Group ( n = 75 ) Grammar Group ( n = 76 )
M (out of 250)
SD
164.41
20.75
161.61
25.53
Note. M represents the means and SD represents the standard deviation. For all tests, n = 15 1 .
Table 2: Means and Standard Deviations of Scores on the Posttest by Group
Test (Posttest) Group GTEC Basic (13th) Dictation Group ( n = 75 ) Granunar Group ( n = 76 )
M (out of 250)
SD
183.95
31.82
169.82
31.37
Table 3: Increase from the Pretest to the Posttest
Grou p t (149)
Tests Dictation Group ( n = 75 ) Grammar Group ( n = 76 ) t p
GTEC Basic 13th - 1lth
M 19.53
SD 25.42
8.19
24. 1 6
-2.78 p < 0.01
Effects of shadowing and Dictation on Listening comprehension Ability of EFL Learners 15
4. Discussion
The primary aim of this study was to examine whether or not the instruction using shadowing and dir_tation simultaneously after listening
practice drills can improve learners' Iistening comprehension ability more
than that using grammar drills after the same listening practice drills in
Japanese high school EFL classrooms. With respect to this research question, the results strongly indicated a positive effect of the instruction
with the combination of shadowing and dictation. The students who were
regularly trained during class time using shadowing and dictation outperformed those who were not tr'ained using shadowing and dictation.
This suggests that a relatively long period of regular instruction in class,
even if the time allocated for each lesson is short, significantly improved
the students' Iistening comprehension ability.
As suggested by previous research (Sato & Nakamura, 1999; Tamai,
2005), shadowing training should be introduced after the learners understand the contents of the target text because its main purpose is not
decoding the text but acquiring the_ skill to repeat the text accurately.
Tamai (2005) also argues that prosody shadowing should be practiced first,
followed by contents shadowing. In this study, however, the teacher did
not provide clear instructions to the students when they were to attempt
both prosody shadowing and contents shadowing because in a real classroom setting, the learners' proficiency levels differ inherently. It
follows that some are able to try contents shadowing and others are not.
Thus, it is safe to say that the method of introduction should fit the real-
life teaching context.
While effective listeners are aware of when they stop paying attention
and try to redirect their attention, ineffective listeners are not aware of this.
The latter often stopped listening when they encountered an unknown word
or phrase (O'Malley, Chamot & Kupper, 1989, p. 428). Shadowing, however, was shown to improve the ability to concentrate and attend to the
aural text (Tamai, 2005), and 5-day intensive training of shadowing was
shown to be effective in improving the students' Iistening comprehension
ability (Iwashita, 2008). As I have argued, shadowing in this study could
have been as effective as it was in lwashita's study. This is because
although the activities were implemented for as short a period as approximately 10 minutes, the trainirl[g period was as long as 10 months.
For dictation, this study adopted. texts with many blanks, which was
very similar to the cloze test sheet. In this respect, Sugiura, Takeuchi, and
Baba (2002) suggest that such a text may function as efficient bottom-up
processing training, the way the cloze test usually does.
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This study is significant in that it empirically demonstrates the effectiveness of the introduction of shadowing and dictation in a real-1ife
classroom setting. In other words, it shows the combined effects of the activities under such restrictions as relatively large class size, availability
of short class time, and varied proficiency levels of students. However, in
order to develop a more efficient and effective mode of instruction, we
should shed light on the following points in future research: duration and
frequency of the instruction and duration of class time that should be allocated for the instruction. Both teachers and students definitely need an
effective, feasible, and sustainable plan to improve listening comprehension ability.
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